a zero mcdonald country
when i was a kid, my parents would torture me by dragging me around to tourist sites (“are we there yet?” “i don’t want to go see the museum.” “this town stinks.” what a button of sunshine i was, their shining pride and joy). one way i would determine how “cultured” these towns that my parents dragged me to was by how many mcdonalds it had. a one-mcdonald town was a veritable podunk, a place with nothing of interest, no reason to be there. a two-mcdonald town was better, you could probably find the town’s name on a map. if we got up to a three-mcdonald town, well then, now we were talking!
evidently, i am not the only one who benchmarks things off of mcdonalds. the economist must have overheard me from the backseat of the volvo (“really dad, there is no reason to even get out of the car at stonehedge. i mean, there’s not even a mcdonalds there”) and said begeebers! this kid must be on to something! check out the below economist international analysis:
two things to notice with this chart:
one: do you see the blinkin’ price of a big mac in switzerland?!?!?!?! holy frickin cow! and for those of you out there who didn’t really believe me when i lived there and said that it was expensive, this should be the definitive proof. a 66% premium for a big mac. sheesh!
two: mozambique doesn’t even get a mention. what are we? chopped liver? oh, wait, that’s right, we don’t have a mcdonald’s in the country. a kfc, yes. mcdonald’s no. we are a zero-mcdonald’s country. ouch.
but if we did have one, i would bet that it’s prices would be closer to switzerland than to thailand.
in a country where the minimum wage is about a buck to a buck fifty a day, my hotel charges $1.80 to watch a pair of panties (but only a buck fifty to wash a pair of men’s underwear! the injustice!).$2.50 for a bra. $4 to wash, not dry clean, but just wash a pair of pants.
i have been searching for an alternative, not too successfully so far. so a pile of dirty clothes has been accumulating in the corner of my room. unfortunately, things get quite dirty here in africa so the stack is getting quite large. my backpack is currently so repulsive that it is disgusting to touch much less carry around. yet around with me it goes as i am too intimidated to give it to the hotel to wash out of fear for what they will charge me. probably more than the backpack cost.
in the meantime, i take my dirty backpack to the market to buy some great wood carved stuff. check out some market photos below:
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
although some things are ridiculously cheap here in maputo, things that can’t be carved out of wood on a street corner by some illiterate person seem to be ridiculously overpriced (and i’m not implying that their wood carved replicas of, for example, a cell phone are not extremely good, but just a bit less useful than, you know, a real cell phone).
or check this out: take a look at the price list, quoted in dollars, for laundry at my hotel:
